Create Programs For Mac BEST

Apps are the most common type of Mac software, but there are many other types of software that you can create, too. The following sections introduce the range of software products you can create for the Mac platform and suggest when you might consider doing so.

Create Programs For Mac

Apps are by far the predominant type of software created for Mac, or for any platform. You use Cocoa to build new Mac apps. To learn more about the features and frameworks available in Cocoa, see Cocoa Application Layer.

The multiwindow document-based app. A multiwindow document-based app, such as Pages, opens a new window for each document the user creates or views. This style of app does not need a main window (although it might open a preferences or other auxiliary window).

Apple uses frameworks to distribute the public interfaces of OS X (and iOS), which are packaged in software development kits. A software development kit (SDK) collects the frameworks, header files, tools, and other resources necessary for developing software targeted at a specific version of a platform. You, too, can use frameworks to distribute public code and interfaces that you create, or to develop private shared libraries to embed in your apps.

Input methods. A common example of an input method is an interface for typing Japanese or Chinese characters using multiple keystrokes. Other examples of input methods include spelling checkers and pen-based gesture recognition systems. You can create input methods using Input Method Kit (InputMethodKit.framework). For information on how to use this framework, see Input Method Kit Framework Reference.

Quartz Composer plug-ins. Quartz Composer supports a plug-in mechanism that allows you to create a custom patch and make it available in the Quartz Composer workspace and to most Quartz Composer clients. (A patch is processing unit that performs a specific task, such as processing a string or rendering an OpenGL texture.) To learn how to create a Quartz Composer plug-in, see Quartz Composer Custom Patch Programming Guide.

To create an agent application, you create a bundled app and include the LSUIElement key in its information property list (Info.plist) file. For more information on using this key, see Information Property List Key Reference.

Screen savers are small programs that take over the screen after a certain period of idleness. Screen savers provide entertainment and also prevent the screen image from being burned into the surface of a display. OS X supports both slideshows and programmatically generated screen-saver content.

A slideshow is a simple type of screen saver that does not require any code to implement. To create a slideshow, you create a bundle with an extension of .slideSaver. Inside this bundle, you place a Resources directory that contains the images you want to display in your slideshow. Your bundle should also include an information property list that specifies basic information about the bundle, such as its name, identifier string, and version.

A programmatic screen saver is a screen saver that continuously generates content to appear on the screen. You can use this type of screen saver to create animations or to create a screen saver with user-configurable options. The bundle for a programmatic screen saver ends with the .saver extension.

You create programmatic screen savers using Cocoa with the Swift language or with Objective-C. Specifically, you create a custom subclass of ScreenSaverView that provides the interface for displaying the screen saver content and options. The information property list of your bundle provides the system with the name of your custom subclass. For information on creating programmatic screen savers, see Screen Saver Framework Reference.

A service typically acts on the currently selected data. When the user initiates a service, the app that holds the selected data places it on the pasteboard. The app whose service was selected then takes the data, processes it, and puts the results (if any) back on the pasteboard for the original app to retrieve. For example, a user might select a folder in the Finder and choose a service that compresses the folder contents and replaces them with the compressed version. Services can represent one-way actions as well. For example, a service could take the currently selected text in a window and use it to create the content of a new email message. For information on how to provide and use services in your app, see Services Implementation Guide.

If you're an app developer, you might want to reuse preference panes intended for the System Preferences app or use the same model to implement your app preferences. To learn how to create and manage preference panes, read Preference Pane Programming Guide.

OS X provides support for creating and testing dynamic content in web pages. If you are developing CGI-based web apps, you can create websites using a variety of scripting technologies, including Perl and the PHP Hypertext Preprocessor (a complete list of scripting technologies is provided in Scripts). You can also create and deploy more complex web apps using JBoss, Tomcat, and WebObjects. To deploy your webpages, use the built-in Apache HTTP web server.

Safari provides standards-compliant support for viewing pages that incorporate numerous technologies, including HTML, XML, XHTML, DOM, CSS, Java, and JavaScript. You can also use Safari to test pages that contain multimedia content created for QuickTime, Flash, and Shockwave.

The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is an object-oriented protocol that defines a way for programs to communicate over a network. XML-RPC is a protocol for performing remote procedure calls between programs. In OS X, you can create clients that use these protocols to gather information from web services across the Internet. To create these clients, you use technologies such as PHP, JavaScript, AppleScript, and Cocoa.

For information on how to create client programs using AppleScript, see XML-RPC and SOAP Programming Guide. For information on how to create web services, see WebObjects Web Services Programming Guide.

Command-line tools are simple programs that manipulate data through a text-based interface. These tools do not use windows, menus, or other user interface elements traditionally associated with apps. Instead, they run from the command-line environment of the Terminal app. Because command-line tools require less explicit knowledge of the system to develop, they are often simpler to write than many other types of software. However, command-line tools are best suited to technically savvy users who are familiar with the conventions and syntax of the command-line interface.

Xcode supports the creation of command-line tools from several initial code bases. For example, you can create a simple and portable tool using standard C or C++ library calls, or you can create a tool more specific to OS X using frameworks such as Core Foundation, Core Services, or Cocoa Foundation.

Launch items are special programs that launch other programs or perform one-time operations during startup and login periods. Daemons are programs that run continuously and act as servers for processing client requests. You typically use launch items to launch daemons or perform periodic maintenance tasks, such as checking the hard drive for corrupted information.

Few developers should ever need to create launch items or daemons. These programs are reserved for special situations in which you need to guarantee the availability of a particular service. For example, OS X provides a launch item to run the DNS daemon. Similarly, a virus-detection program might install a launch item to launch a daemon that monitors the system for virus-like activity. In both cases, the launch item would run its daemon in the root session, which provides services to all users of the system. To learn more about launch items and daemons, see Daemons and Services Programming Guide.

A script is a set of text commands that are interpreted at runtime and turned into a sequence of actions. Most scripting languages provide high-level features that make it easy to implement complex workflows quickly. Scripting languages are often very flexible, letting you call other programs and manipulate the data they return. Some scripting languages are also portable across platforms, so that you can use your scripts anywhere.

Kernel extensions are code modules that load directly into the kernel process space and therefore bypass the protections offered by the OS X core environment. Most developers have little need to create kernel extensions. The situations in which you might need a kernel extension are the following:

Although developers of mice and keyboards might be able to use the standard drivers, many other developers require custom drivers. Developers of hardware such as scanners, printers, AGP cards, and PCI cards typically have to create custom device drivers because these devices require more sophisticated data handling than is usually needed for mice and keyboards. Hardware developers also tend to differentiate their hardware by adding custom features and behavior, which makes it difficult for Apple to provide generic drivers to handle all devices.

You can create your own keyboard shortcuts for menu commands in any macOS app, including the Finder. This might be useful if a global shortcut, which works the same with most apps, conflicts with a specific app shortcut. In this case, you could create a new key combination.

In the Menu Title field, type the menu command for which you want to create a shortcut, exactly as the command appears in the app, including the > character (type ->), ellipses (type three periods without spaces or press Option-; (semi-colon)), or other punctuation.

To create programs for a Texas Instruments graphing calculator using the TI Connect software for Mac, the TI Data Editor application must be used. For a full list of all calculators and Mac operating systems supported for use with the TI Connect software for Mac, visit the TI Connect Software website.